


Culminations

by Merfilly



Series: Future in the Making [9]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is fluff and the beginning of something new</p>
            </blockquote>





	Culminations

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. While I had already been working with nanites as part of Metroplex's workings, I would be remiss if I did not point out madripoor_rose's recent use of a nanite swarm to allow physical contact.
> 
> 2\. Consent issues in Chromia's arc, as she is between a rock and a hard place when offered a choice.

Hot Rod usually preferred being on Earth. He preferred the solid gravity and thicker atmosphere, loved the noise and bustle. He half-understood why Optimus kept calling him back to Mars, but still thought that was a huge mistake on the part of the AllSpark. Seriously, even Ultra Magnus didn't half-believe that Hot Rod had what it took to be a Prime, code or not.

Or maybe Ultra Magnus did, and that was one reason the senior mech tried hard to push Roddy more. Kup… Kup never said much on it, but Kup always had indulged the youngest member of their cohort. Either way, right now, Hot Rod intended to make the most of his escape, and folded down into the Supra he'd adapted for his alt on Earth.

Before he could peel out, though, there was a slam of a door and running feet that were smaller than most of the organics Roddy usually dealt with. He couldn't safely transform, as the small person was soon in his space, and emphatically making it clear with a solid kick at a back tire.

"Open up!"

Hot Rod, responding to the distress, did so, and was soon invaded by none other than Daniel Witwicky, the very late addition to Sam's life. Danny had been born very recently, maybe counting all of five solar revolutions.

"Well, go!" Danny demanded, looking at the steering wheel's insignia.

"You are not one of my authorized human partners, Daniel."

"Don't care. Dad's coming. DRIVE!"

Hot Rod did not have to reply as Sam, Bumblebee, and Carly all piled in via separate doors into the bay. Hot Rod could not help his instinctive reaction to a triple threat, or to the sheer pulse of the child's bio-electric fields wreaking havoc inside his own. The warrior flipped back into mech, handily catching Daniel who squealed happily, and pulling him in protectively against his chestplates.

"Danny you are in so much trouble when I get to you," Sam was saying, walking forward. Hot Rod winced a little; Sam still, years and years later, reeked of the AllSpark's death-knell to those who had not been here when it was destroyed. Hot Rod felt it more than Kup or Ultra Magnus, he'd found out, but all of them that had not been caught in the backwash of it noticed to one degree or other.

"Hot Rod, would you set our son down?" Carly asked politely. She had not expected a pregnancy at a point where she should have been entering the end of her generative cycle, but the youthful extension of life was more than skin deep. She had accepted it, but, like Sam, she had so little time for the child. He was busy as one of the major diplomats between the species, and she was part of the Public Relations team surrounding the tech releases.

"Don't," Danny whispered, pressing tight against the chestplates. "I just wanted to go out and they both said 'no' and I accidentally spilled their drinks."

"Umm… no?" Hot Rod was surprised at himself for getting in the middle of this. He knew he shouldn't, but that little run down made Hot Rod think of Kup shielding him from Ultra Magnus's duties for him.

Bee's static burst of surprise flooded out the protest of Sam while Carly got contemplative. Somehow, it didn't seem to surprise Hot Rod in the least when both Ultra Magnus and Kup arrived. He cringed, shoulder panels and the door-wings, as so many called them, both fell with worry for what was coming. He tried to find any way he could think of to put it all at an end, and his processor clicked over the one thing that would make Kup back him on all his feelings right now for the child that had come to him seeking refuge and company.

"He's cohort," Hot Rod blurted.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…. MY son!" Sam said, as fiercely possessive as he had ever been.

Kup looked at the young mech, and the tiny organic peering out of Hot Rod's hands, then rested a hand on Ultra Magnus's shoulder to still any protest from that corner.

"Maybe our son, but not ours to keep, Sam," Carly said. "Let's go talk it over, Roddy."

`~`~`~`~`

Metroplex had been honest when saying he did not notice much of daily life in an active way. However, certain conditions would trigger his attention. Multiple high-ranking officers coming to a meeting in a place not considered one of their normal duty places was such a trigger. He had been introduced to Jazz on the arrival of the silver mech, and recognized the spark of a data hacker instantly. Having that kind of threat move toward a project that Metroplex had taken on, with the company of the Prime, the Security Director, and the Chief Medical Officer was worrying to the cityformer.

"Is there any way I may be of assistance, Optimus Prime?" he asked, voice centering near their side before his holo-form appeared, scaled to a height that would not be inappropriate while walking alongside a Prime.

"We have a security issue in the form of the femme in medical, Metroplex. We have a plan in place to cope with it."

"Begging a moment of patience, Optimus Prime, but I request to be better informed concerning this, as I had already noted certain discrepancies and begun to operate in accordance with protocol to correct the deficiencies."

"Do what?" Epps asked, as they all came to a stop to look at Metroplex's holo-form.

"Obviously, as she is a restrained being, I have not actively done more than investigate the damage while laying out plans for how I may fully correct it. At this point, given the decay rate of her spark, I will have to offer her the option of full integration, which would then grant me access to the secondary memory storage units worked through her frame."

There was utter silence, as the mechs and human considered what had just been said. Jazz broke it, cocking his helm a little. "What if what she is, whatever is hidden in those units infected you?"

"Impossible. My memory and processing units are isolated from one another while I am integrating new units, and nothing can spread fast enough to keep various units from throwing the kill switch."

"You can save her?" Ratchet asked, overriding Epps and Prime both with his urgent demand.

"It is my nature to always fix any damage and safeguard my denizens," Metroplex said with patience. "She may not accept the necessity of symbiosis, but every being has a right to choose their own ending, if the alternative is unwanted."

"Wise words," Prime said. "Please, Metroplex, come with us to speak with her."

`~`~`~`~`

_"We fear you are an agent of a hostile force."_

The words slammed into Chromia's processes, bringing up the indignant rage they deserved… and triggering other, insidious mechanisms. Reports were coded, energy pooled, and data packets ready to be punched out of this compromised probe.

"No!" Jazz's shout had him and Epps moving to the computer terminals, each seeking to stop the breach of base-security. Jazz could read the spike; Epps was just hearing the climb of energies with his augmented hearing.

Metroplex's holo-form went through the barrier, a swarm of his ever present nanites coming to rest on the form's hands as they reached out to hold the femme's shoulders, creating sensor contact and preliminary paths for connection.

"You feel it," he said as the femme's optics landed on him wildly, showing fear in her defensive posture.

"Cybertron is my home!" she wailed, trying to deny the truth that was sucking her life away to use her as no more than a battery for the betrayal of her species.

"I can stop it. But it means becoming one with me, Chromia. To save your life and stop it!" Metroplex's own distress was evident in his voice.

The energy build pulled the light away from Chromia's optics, but she jerked her helm once, a hand reaching for Metroplex, and he took that as an affirmative. Through the nanites, both those already saturating her frame and the ones he now used on her externals, Metroplex flowed into the femme, letting his holo-form die away as he rerouted the data flow. His energy flooded her spark, redesigning it, making it a healthy shard dependent on the life force of his own. The data packets marked for outward communication and the data on the hidden memory units were dumped into an isolated memory bank and routed to Jazz's attention for analysis. Epps heard the energy build taper off suddenly, and then Chromia, sheathed in a glowing blanket formed of the nanite swarm, collapsed to the floor of the isolation bay.

"She needs recharge," Metroplex stated from up towards the ceiling, too exhausted by the intensive redesign and defusing to focus more carefully. "I hope the data is helpful, Jazz and Robert Epps."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be," Jazz said, failing to use his lazy humanized dialect in the eagerness he had to tear it all apart.

"She's safe?" Ratchet asked.

"She is," Metroplex said. "I have stripped all data, and am currently reconfiguring her to be more accurate to her frame class, while installing the needed power diversions that all symbionts require."

Optimus kept his own words in his processor. Chromia had been forced to that decision; would she truly accept it in the end?


End file.
